I take two things for granted: first, that we cannot go on with the Bank of England constituted as it now is; and secondly, that the substitute of one Bank of issue, which has been proposed as a specific cure for the disorders engendered by the Bank of England, would rather aggravate than subdue our sufferings.

We cannot go on with the Bank of England, because both in point of fact, and in point of principle, it has been too often in the wrong; - 1797, when it stopped payment for the second time; 1802, when it depreciated the currency 8 1/2 per cent., and 1810 when it depreciated it 25 per cent.; the years 1782, 1792, 1826, 1836, and the calendar of error and misfortune, they have occurred too often, and proved too heavy, to be borne any longer with indifference. The idea of removing them by creating one Bank of issue only, appears in my view of the case a capital mistake, easy of detection, and by the simplest process. The object is to lessen the frequency and intensity of specific evils which have been pressing upon us for some years past, and for this purpose it is seriously proposed to increase the rigor of that very condition which is at once the source and seat of all we complain of.

1839, with their respective panics; 1825, when we were within a few hours of having neither specie nor acceptable paper; the drains of gold in 1832, and in 1839, when but for the loan from the Bank of France there would not have been sovereigns in Threadneedle-street to pay a shilling in the pound - these are the facts which forbid us to think of retaining the present constitution of the Bank of England. The discordant doctrines maintained and enforced by different sets of directors, equally tend to shake our confidence in the wisdom of such a governing body. At one period its heads contended that they were not bound to look to the foreign exchanges when issuing their notes; at another they were satisfied that those very exchanges afforded the only safe rule for regulating their issues. The discounts of private paper, according to Messrs. Harman, Dorrien, and Haldi-man, are the proper means for managing a paper currency, and the worst according to Messrs. Horsley Palmer, and Norman. In 1832, a scheme of gold and paper kept in certain proportions, was proclaimed to be a certain safety-rule of management, but in 1840 was admitted to have its weak points, and not to be what had been pretended. Place these under whatever head you please in A slight reference to the course of events will demonstrate the correctness of this observation. In 1832 Bank of England notes were made a legal tender, for the express purpose of economising the use of gold, and keeping a sufficient reserve of that metal at all times in the country. This was the intention; and how has it been realized? As an Irishman would answer - the other way. Within no period of the same length, since the resumption of cash payments, has gold been so often run for, the drain of it so heavy, and the stock so low, as from 1832, when the legal tender clause was sanctioned, down to 1841. We had been badly off before, but we have been much worse since. To my mind it is not difficult to account for this: we have been proceeding for some time past upon an erroneous principle; we have been pushing the policy of economising the use of gold to extremes; we have been straining to secure all the advantages derivable from a gold standard, and, at the same time, resorting to numerous expedients for the purpose of rendering the use of gold as infrequent and unnecessary as possible. This was a double policy, and far too refined for practical success; with the one hand we made it desirable that gold should reach us, and with the other we sought to render its presence superfluous and unprofitable. The end of all this has been an involved and complicated state of things, so vexatious, precarious, and distressing, that we must get rid of the whole system altogether, or we stand but an indifferent chance of enjoying security or attaining durable prosperity. We have become extremely artificial, and have so refined upon refinement itself, that one half the property of the country is unsubstantial, and often exists only in name.

Banking is not exempt from the general law of business. Whoever embarks in that career requires the possession of property, and that property he is expected to invest in his business. He may trade on credit; but if he does, he is less independent than he would have been in the other case - he has double tides to work. The wholesale merchant, foreign and domestic, the manufacturer, and the shopkeeper, are all bound by this condition, - they find it necessary, moreover, to proportion the money invested to the extent of the business carried on. I see no reason for exempting the Banker from this general law of commerce: I think that must be an unsound state of things in which a man is allowed to trade upon an artificial process, and without adequate tangible means. A Banker is now encouraged to keep but a small amount of specie by him; all his transactions resolve themselves into and are based upon ready money, and yet he is relieved of all labour and anxiety in procuring specie. The charge and responsibility of that obligation are taken from his shoulders, and put upon the Bank of England. The customers for gold in the market are consequently reduced to a single body; who, if the gold comes, take it in, but confess that they do not conceive it a part of their duty to go out of their way to obtain it. This is an evil. If every Banker was obliged to market for himself, we should soon find our condition amended.

In all modern speculations upon the theory of money, there seems to me to be this leading error, - we argue of gold as if it was some natural element, the presence of which we can command by a certain process or combination of circumstances: once these have been produced, it is presumed that the object sought will be secured. Some political economists write as if gold could be made to come and go according to some fixed and unvarying law, such as that, for instance, governing the flow of water, which we know will always rise to its natural level, and float without injury objects of a certain weight and form. Modern science, no doubt, has gone far and can do much, but it has its limits; it may suggest improvements in the use of things, but it cannot change their nature. Gold is a commodity, like corn, wine, or wool, and it is nothing else. If we will trade in gold upon the tried principles and fair conditions we find it best to apply to all other articles, we shall not experience more than the average inconvenience and irregularity to which all commerce is exposed. So long as our mode of dealing with gold is different from our mode of dealing with all other things, we shall be sure to create difficulties for ourselves, and shall have no just ground of complaint if we suffer from an unwise interference with the ordinary course of things.